173- Improving Longevity at the Cellular Level with Dr. Sandra Kaufmann

[00:00:14] Bryan Carroll: longevity. It's one of those things I'm sure as you start to age, you start thinking about. A lot more and more. And I definitely have noticed the more I've aged, the more I have also been looking into different longevity, which is why I've had people coming on, talking about peptide therapy and all these different modalities that you can use to.

[00:00:33] Stay as youthful as you can. Because my goal as I age is I want to be as youthful and as vibrant and active as possible until the day that I die. So whatever it takes to get to that point, I am completely down for that because I don't really want to creep into old age. I want to go in and have all the energy that I have up to this.

[00:00:56] What's up everyone. I'm Bryan Carroll and I'm here to help people move more, eat well and be adventurous. And today I have Dr. Sandra Kaufmann on the show to teach us how to improve our longevity all the way down at the cellular level. So she has her Kaufmann protocol, which is a bunch of different steps that help you to really kind of extend your life.

[00:01:19] And her goal is to live, to be 120 years old. So. Deep into the longevity stuff, trying to figure out what is actually applicable and what isn't. So it was great having this conversation with her. And I also really enjoyed because she kept looking at me going you're so young, why do you care about this stuff?

[00:01:37] And like I said, I want to get ahead of the curve now and not be, you know, 50, 60, 70 years old. And then wishing I had. Back at this at my current age. So Dr. Sandra coffin, as the founder of the Kauffman anti-aging Institute, a forward thinking educational company with the overarching goal of educating the general public on why we age and how we can minimize the effects of aging to live longer healthier lives.

[00:02:02] And the Kauffman protocol, which has both a book and app on the market is a product of this and is underpinned by Sandra's longevity and cellular biology expertise. So let's dive into my conversation with Dr. Sandra. Thank you, Sandra, for coming onto the show. 

[00:02:19] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: My pleasure. It's great to be here, of course.

[00:02:21] And 

[00:02:21] Bryan Carroll: I'm really excited to chat with you about longevity and what we can do to really improve our bodies at the cellular level. But before we dive into that, let's learn a little bit more about you and your backer. 

[00:02:33] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So I have this sort of a variable background. Actually. I started out as a cell biologist once upon a time, I was a tropical biologist.

[00:02:41] I've been lost in many jungles attacked by many bats realized at some point that plans don't pay the bills. So I went to med school did a year of neurosurgery. I've done a year of general surgery at the moment. I'm an anesthesiologist and I am the chief of pediatric anesthesia at a children's hospital.

[00:02:56] And. But I, of course didn't want to age like everybody else that I know. So about 10 years ago, I embarked on this journey to try to figure out what to do about it and using all of my skills from cells to bodies, to drugs, pharmacodynamics, that sort of thing. I decided that you age for very specific reasons and that you could slow.

[00:03:18] Yeah. 

[00:03:18] Bryan Carroll: And we talked briefly before we started recording just about how, as we age, we want to age gracefully. We don't want to be at an old age and everything has just completely fallen apart and our bodies hurt and they're just not doing what we want them to do. We want to go out of this world in the best possible shape that we can be doing the things that we love.

[00:03:39] So at what point in the aging process, does your body start to change like. Is it around that 25 year old age? Or is that kind of just a generalized age that they throw out there? 

[00:03:53] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So in, in reality, the answer is 35, but of course there's a standard deviation based on genetics and environmental factors and that sort of thing.

[00:04:01] And it's also based on Oregon's kidney function starts going down at 18, but brain function doesn't even maximize until you're 20. So it's very variable on who you are and what body part you're talking about. But if you averaged it altogether, most people would say 35. 

[00:04:15] Bryan Carroll: Interesting. Why would a kidney function slow down first?

[00:04:20] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: I have no clue probably because of the acidic environment that goes through. If you have to think about what every cell and every organ does and they're going to take a beating or not. So for example, your skin takes a beating because it's the only organ that gets it with UV radiation, right? Your brain takes a beating because of the high glucose and oxygen.

[00:04:40] Use your kidneys, take a beating because of all of the garbage that you have to excrete out your bladder. So it gets filtered through your kidney cuts, concentrated, sits in your bladder, and then your piece is a high rate of kidney failure. And kidney aging. And then if it's a lot of toxins and you end up with bladder cancer liver is equally as bad because it has a lot of you know, detoxifying to do.

[00:05:02] The good news is that some kidney or liver tends to regenerate a bit. So that's not as bad. So you just have to think about what the organ is, what it does and what it's exposed to. 

[00:05:11] Bryan Carroll: Interesting. So I would assume if you went back 50 plus years ago and did the research between the different organs, the amount of chemicals in it, all that type of stuff that we're exposed to now is probably aging.

[00:05:23] The liver and the kidney is faster than back then. 

[00:05:27] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: I would venture to guess, yes. I mean, clearly it's never been done because no one actually wants to answer that question, but probably so, yeah. I mean, the, the estimate now is that if you put a body in a coffin, it's not gonna, it's not gonna deteriorate for an extra 10 years.

[00:05:40] Because of all the preservatives we eat. Wow. Holy smokes. I personally have never dug up bodies to be able to tell you that for sure. But it's not an unreasonable gas 

[00:05:50] Bryan Carroll: and yeah. Seriously and wow. That's that's super interesting to think about. So like you had mentioned at some point you decided to start switching over and trying to live with healthy longevity in mind.

[00:06:03] What were some of the first initial things that you changed in your own? To make that happen. 

[00:06:10] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: What's the, I sort of attack this from a scientific point of view. I don't tend to read the magazines on the racks in the grocery store. So all, you know, all the eat better detox, your body, all that crap. I just kind of ignored and I dove straight into actual bench research as a scientist.

[00:06:28] And so I, I honestly started with free radicals and that sort of thing. When you, you know, I started doing this 10 years ago, so the literature is significantly different now than it was then. But I probably read on a hundreds of thousands of research articles, trying to figure out exactly why cells do age.

[00:06:44] And some of it was adding. Crap and other stuff made a lot of sense. And I tell people, cause it's true. My office looked like a Stickum factory sort of blew up, right. A little post-it it's like absolutely everywhere. And as it became more organized and the stickers sorta like clustered, I realized that in essence, there's seven reasons that your cells age, and I sorta tried to attack them as methodically as like.

[00:07:10] Bryan Carroll: And so let's break it down to some of those foundations. What were some of the major scientific foundations that you discovered lead into a healthy. 

[00:07:19] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So let me say this first there's the absolute scientific terminology. And then I try to create a terminology where anyone can sort of understand it.

[00:07:27] And my brain sort of goes back and forth. So if I say something that doesn't make sense and one or the other, just stop me. But the first one, the first category, or I call them tenants is DNA alterations. Right. And in my, my generic sort of understanding of this, this is the instruction manual for your body, right.

[00:07:42] And DNA falls apart for several years. The first thing that we look at is telomere length, right? At the end of your chromosomes, sort of unravel and fall to pieces over the course of time. And there's an indirect correlation actually direct correlation between the length of your telomeres and the length of your.

[00:07:57] And you can have that measured. Unfortunately, it's not the same in all cells. So people are always annoyed that, oh, this one cell represents my entire existence and it doesn't different cells have different lengths, et cetera, but it gives you a gross understanding. Secondly, we talk about epigenetic modification and this is basically methylation on the DNA.

[00:08:13] It can also be acetylation phosphorylation and a variety of other chemical changes on their histones, but essentially it's how the environment changes your DNA and how you process. Pieces of your DNA as you get older. And epigenetic modification is the reason that identical twins are less identical as they get older.

[00:08:32] And the last thing in this category is DNA protection. So DNA sort of folds up in histones and then it folds up into a different chromatin patterns and this gets destroyed over time. And there are many things that we can actually do to protect the coronary structure of R D. So that in a nutshell, it was probably more than you wanted to know.

[00:08:51] Is tenant number one? 

[00:08:53] Bryan Carroll: No, it's really good. Cause like with genes and DNA, like you were kind of talking about just because you have a gene doesn't mean it has to express itself depending on the environment that you're in and the things that you feed, those genes that can make it turn on and off is that.

[00:09:06] Yeah, 

[00:09:07] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: that that's, that's, that's pretty much correct. That's exactly right. And up until a certain point, right? You, you don't want to screw with your genes until you're an adult. For the most part, right? Because these genes and the timing of how they express their proteins, changes those from an infant to a toddler, to a kid, you know, all the way through adolescents, to an adult.

[00:09:25] The key point of this at this point is you want to stay in adult. You want to do, you don't want to turn into old crotchety, horrible person. So that's when we want to sort of arrest the epigenetic. 

[00:09:35] Bryan Carroll: And so at what point do you discover when you should start taking care of that then? 

[00:09:42] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So you want to do healthy things all the time.

[00:09:45] And there's some things that we know have positive epigenetic effects and some things that have very negative epigenetic effects. So if you can stay away from the negative stuff, as long as possible, obviously you're going to fare much better. Like we know that high alcohol smoke, environmental toxins, all of those things are negative epigenetic modifiers.

[00:10:01] We know things like green tea or the chemical ECGC in green tea is an extremely positive epigenetic modifier. So you can sort of do this at any age because you're positively affecting it, but you don't want to be too, too, too crazy until you're fully formed. 

[00:10:17] Bryan Carroll: Yeah. I was just thinking about like teenagers and stuff.

[00:10:20] They like to experiment a lot. And luckily they're at that point in life where their bodies are very resilient and they can rebound very quickly. But when they're in that party stage and they're, you know, trying out all these different things is that having a major impact on their DNA over the long haul.

[00:10:37] Compared to, if they would have waited 10 more years before they got into that. 

[00:10:42] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Well, I don't have any study to demonstrate that it does or doesn't, but common sense sort of dictates that it absolutely would have a negative effect. I mean, honestly, your frontal lobe doesn't fully develop and that's where you make all your conscious decisions until you're 25.

[00:10:55] So if you're a 16 year old pothead, you're probably not going to fare as well as, you know, a 40 year old pothead. 

[00:11:04] Bryan Carroll: Yup. So after the DNA alterations, what is kind of the next phase that you look 

[00:11:10] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: into? All right. So tenant two is what I call a it's it's the energy systems of yourself. So this is basically my second.

[00:11:18] Mitochondria, obviously those little organelles we'd all through in the fifth grade is like a big Tylenol shaped capsule with a squiggly line on the inside. And this is where we make all of our cellular energy. And depending on how much energy, any one particular cell needs sort of dictates, how many of these little organelles we have?

[00:11:32] Yeah. And they take a dive for very specific reasons. So number one, by the time you're 40 you're, you're deficient in something called nicotinamide and you need that because it makes NAD, which is extremely important. And something called the electron transport chain nicotine, and might also does three other things that are very important around the cell.

[00:11:52] So if you're deficient one of the key problems here is that your mitochondria aren't gonna function. The other thing that happens in mitochondria is because it uses oxygen. A lot of oxygen. That's why we need oxygen. The oxygen becomes radicalized, meaning it gets an extra electron over the course of time.

[00:12:07] And depending on how much how many mitochondria you have, what your activity level is, it's somewhere between one to 9% of your oxygen gets radicalized and radicalized oxygen sort of floats around yourself and causes problems. I like to think of it as a little mini bombs all over. So. The structure of your mitochondria, it can destroy the structure of your entire cell if it gets out of hand.

[00:12:27] So your cell is pretty smart though. So it makes free, radical scavengers. Unfortunately, over the course of time, your body doesn't make enough free radical scavengers. So you have more damage from the radicals. So you can actually augment free radical scavenging by either taking direct scree, radical scavenger.

[00:12:45] We're secondary free, radical scavengers that cause your body to make more of its indogenous stuff. And this is lithic gludethyon and the superoxide dismutase is and the catalyst and that sort of thing. 

[00:12:56] Bryan Carroll: So after 40 years old, is it beneficial to start utilizing different therapies, such as hyperbaric treatment and that type of stuff to get more oxygen into your.

[00:13:07] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: No. No. So, so actually that's a really funny thing that you ask. So hyperoxic compartments in my world, I think are absolutely like the worst thing you can possibly do for yourself. Other longevity specialists will tell you that they're good for you. My understanding on a cellular level is if you want to, and every, every study says this.

[00:13:26] If you're looking at senescent cells and senescent cells are cells that have undergone DNA damage, they've shut down. They become problem cells. Some people call them zombie cells. I like to think of them as grumpy old man cells, but they exude something called the essay P which is an inflammatory cytokine and profile.

[00:13:42] But so in an experimental model, if you want to create senescent cells, you give them too much oxygen. It's bad. If you want to kill your hair follicles, give them too much oxygen. So sitting in a hyperoxic chamber in my. It's a really bad idea. That being said, if you are a diabetic and you can't get enough blood supply, you can't get enough oxygen in your blood to go heal tissue.

[00:14:06] Then it's not such a bad idea, but in terms of actual longevity I just don't think it's a great idea and other people are going to tell me that I'm wrong. But that's just on a cellular level. It's just not a good idea. Now, granted, there are a ton of other good things you can do, but I wouldn't classify that as well.

[00:14:22] Bryan Carroll: So give us a couple of examples of some of the good things 

[00:14:25] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: to do. All right. So anyone over the age of 40 needs, nicotine nicotinamide and it comes in several forms. There's nicotinamide riboside there's nicotine amine, mano nucleotide. Those two have sort of cornered the. Because it's so necessary.

[00:14:40] And because there's a whole lot of trademark and copyright infringement lawsuits going on at the moment, instead of taking PO people take it in various methods. So for, I don't know, a thousand bucks, you can go get an IV infusion of NAD. You can get nasal sprays, you can get transdermal patches, you can get sublinguals.

[00:14:57] It's just because it's so popular and people are trying to make money out of the idea that everyone's deficient. The cheapest way is just oral supplementation. But choose whichever mechanism of action you want after 40, you need it. 

[00:15:09] Bryan Carroll: And can you take too much? 

[00:15:13] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So the answer is a yes and no. It's really hard to take too much that being said, if you go and you eat an entire bottle of it, yes.

[00:15:21] It's probably going to need too much. Most people are deficient. I actually don't know. I mean, I could theorize what would happen if you took too much, but I've never actually met anyone that took too much. I do know that if you take an ID infusion, your blood level, You know, they peaked dramatically and then they dropped dramatically.

[00:15:35] So some is extraordinarily deficient. It's not a bad way to start, but I wouldn't do it on a, on a regular basis. I think you'd start with an IV and then continue on a PO. And if you just want to be lazy, you can just do a PO level, which is what most people do. 

[00:15:48] Bryan Carroll: Now, someone similar to my age, 31, is it beneficial to start taking that now?

[00:15:53] Or should I wait until after. 

[00:15:56] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Wait, wait, wait. And it's not necessarily age dependent, like 40 is sort of just an average, right. Life is a bell shaped curve. That's what most people would need it. If people have dropping energy levels that's when you not want to start taking it, because that's the one thing you're gonna.

[00:16:11] Nicotinamide is also crucial for DNA repair mechanisms. It's a sirtuin coactivator or it's a, it's a co-enzyme for sirtuin, which you're not going to see until you're 40. And it also has a communication device between your nucleus in your mitochondria. So you probably aren't going to notice any of those other things.

[00:16:26] You're just going to realize that you're tired and having an energy. So at that point, yeah, take the NAD 

[00:16:31] Bryan Carroll: for people that have young kids and they're just tired and have no energy all the time. Is that the same type of tired and no energy you're talking about? Or. 

[00:16:41] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: That's a good question. I think. Yeah. I think if you have three kids and you're running around, like your head's on fire, I think you're just, that's just life.

[00:16:49] I don't think I can fix that that's time. And I'm hiring a babysitter. 

[00:16:54] Bryan Carroll: Perfect. So that was tenant two. How many tenants are there? Are there 

[00:16:58] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: seven, there are seven tenants and w you know, we can sort of gloss over a few of them. Like, so three is pathways, there's this there's sort of two in pathways, the amp kinase pathway.

[00:17:09] These you want to turn on, and then there's the mTOR pathway that you kind of want to turn off. The only one that people really like to talk about or is the amp kinase pathway, because this is what gets triggered when people have their caloric restriction. Right. So when you don't eat for a long period of time, your body senses a drop in energy which is paired with an increase in something called amp, which is the opposite of ATP.

[00:17:32] And then your body says, ha ha, I'm starving. And then the cells go into a state of hibernation and it triggers sort of enzymes and protein cascades that help to hibernate your body. So that is how caloric restriction diets actually help London. Interesting. 

[00:17:47] Bryan Carroll: And when you say caloric restriction, is this significant restriction or is it just like a couple hundred calorie restriction?

[00:17:55] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So people tend to go, you know, there's all of these competitions right now. Right? I haven't eaten anything for 18 hours. I haven't eaten anything for 22 hours, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the answer is no one really knows at this point. But definitely caloric reduction in any way, shape or form is going to activate the amp kinase pathways and are going to benefit.

[00:18:13] Bryan Carroll: So it's inline with intermittent fasting and the benefits of intermittent 

[00:18:17] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: fasting. That's exactly right. I will tell you, however, for people that are too lazy to intermittent fast, and I am. A sort of a renowned junk food junkie. You can take actual drugs and chemicals that tell your body that you are Clark really restricted and have the same pathways activated without actually having to starve.

[00:18:33] So there are absolute cheat mechanisms around this. Of 

[00:18:36] Bryan Carroll: course, there always is. That's America. What is tenant for 

[00:18:42] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: tenant for this is called quality control. So in my factory model, right things get mucked up and you have to fix them. And the same happens to us. There are four protein repair mechanisms in your cells and there's four D.

[00:18:54] Repair mechanisms. And there's also recycling, which is our version of autophagy, right? So DNA fixing is extremely important because in every cell every day, you've got 10 to the fifth DNA. 10 to the fifth. That is a ton. And if you don't fix them, either yourselves going to become senescent and then apoptotic, or you're going to get cancer.

[00:19:15] So having your DNA repair mechanisms as up-to-date and Intune as possible is going to help you. And then autophagy as you recycle pieces and parts of organelles that don't work very well. You are much better off for a whole variety of reasons. So the good news is we have agents that do both of those things.

[00:19:34] Bryan Carroll: Can you share what. 

[00:19:35] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Sure. So the, the two good ones for repair increasing the repair of your DNA. There's something called AC 11 and it comes from a plant from the Amazon. And there is another one. Commercially is known as Fern block. It's called Palo podium. It is, where's it from, it's a tropical plant.

[00:19:51] I remember exactly where it's from, but basically it increases the bird. Which is the base pair repair mechanism system. So we know that it improves your DNA and especially in the skin supposed to reduce your risk of skin cancer. 

[00:20:06] Bryan Carroll: Fascinating. So it sounds like a tenant for is kind of one of those Really important ones that you can actually get quite a bit done with you 

[00:20:14] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: can, and this is one of those things that no one's ever going to feel or see, you know, people say, I, you know, I tell people to take something and again, I don't feel any different, well, of course you're not, you know, I'm reducing your relative risk of cancer.

[00:20:26] Are you going to feel that? Probably not. It's sort of, you just have to sort of assume that it's true or not, 

[00:20:32] Bryan Carroll: right? Yeah. It's amazing. How many cells basically go bad every single day? 

[00:20:38] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Yes. No, it's absolutely true. Which, which actually gets us well, we can then skip, that's actually tenant six. And, and we'll get there in a minute.

[00:20:45] Remind me about stem cells. But anyway, so that's where we are. That's 4, 5, 5 is your inflammatory system. It starts out as your immune system and it causes you to be inflamed over the course of time. Many things happen along the way. So your immune system does not work as well as it should. So people as they get older and more prone to infect.

[00:21:04] They're more prone to not responding well to vaccines, which is why older people still get COVID despite getting vaccinated. And the other thing is that these cells that are supposed to help us turn into cancers, which are leukemias and lymphomas. So your immune system just totally gets screwed up.

[00:21:18] We become inflamed and it's just a miserable experience. The good news is we can sort of optimize all of these things and turn off our inflammatory system and reduce all of the issues that. It 

[00:21:29] Bryan Carroll: sounds like that would also, that would include reactions to food that would include a lack of sleep. A lot of lifestyle factors actually that seems to be, would fit into that realm.

[00:21:42] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: No, no, no, absolutely. Absolutely. So histamine comes from mass cells and mass cells, a part of your immune system. And if you have overactive mass cells you just become you know, Absolute horrible allergies. And there's many agents that we know of that stabilize mass cells. I've cured a few people's asthma, just sort of by accident, putting them on something for different reasons.

[00:22:02] And they're like, oh my God, my asthma has gone well, Ebola, you know, not surprising stuff. But one of the best things about this tenant is a lot of people's like as they get older, have a ton of aches and pains. And if I can make your aches and pains go away, you feel better, you do more and you just feel like more lively and young.

[00:22:18] Bryan Carroll: Yep. Going back to the longevity. Good at the end of your life. Yep. All right. Tenant six and stem cells. 

[00:22:26] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: All right. So tell me, right. So tenant six, I call it individual cell needs because despite the fact that I like to pretend that every cell was exactly the same, clearly they're not right. A red cell floating around in your bloodstream is going to have different challenges on your liver cell versus your brain cell.

[00:22:40] That's there forever. And in this category, I put the senescent cells that we want to get rid of and the stem cells that we want to keep. Right. You have basically a limited number of stem cells. They can sort of self reproduce to a certain degree, but not really. So these are the things we really, really, really want to take care of.

[00:22:57] And the stem cell niche is a really protected environments. And one of the things that is just really is sensitive to his levels of oxygen. And I'm just a port, as we talked about before that people love high oxygen because it's just destroying yourself still population, and that's going to ultimately be what does.

[00:23:14] Well, one of the reasons that's a big one. So when they 

[00:23:17] Bryan Carroll: do stem cell treatments, aren't they taking your stem cells and then are they spinning it? And that gets it to replicate. How do they get it to replicate outside of your body? 

[00:23:25] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Right. So taking your own stem cells, which is really interesting because it depends on how old you are.

[00:23:30] If you take out a young person's dumb. So they just put them in culture and in a nice little medium that it sort of resembles the stem cell niche and they grow them and they love them. If you take stem cells out of an old person, you're gonna get old person stem cells. So if you're thinking about banking or stem-cells do it as young as possible interestingly enough you can get them from your bone marrow.

[00:23:49] You can get them from your fat. There is a place in Toronto where they get them from your hair follicles. And in fact, I think I'm going to go up to Toronto this summer because I just found out about this and have my hair, cell stem, a hair follicle stem cells. There we go. I'm putting culture. So I'll have them when I'm older.

[00:24:06] But you don't need to spin them. You just sort of put them in a nice one little bath and they're happy and you give them wine and they watch Netflix and then they reproduce in the lobby. 

[00:24:13] Bryan Carroll: Okay. Is there a way to replicate that same type of environment within your body? Or is your body going to use them too quickly before they can replicate like crazy.

[00:24:23] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So it just sort of pends on the stress that you put on your body. If you're forcing your body to constantly turn things over you're, you're replicating your stem cells more quickly. You want to sort of. Nurse them along, give them all the wonderful things that they need. And in my book, I talk about all the wonderful things that you want to do to maximize the niche of your stem cells, right?

[00:24:45] Cause they're the sun cells that are going to last forever. So you want to maintain the nutrient value. You don't want micronutrient efficiency. You want decent fatty acids. You want decent calories without overdoing it. You want, you know, it's just a variety of factors to try to create the perfect little nursery for your yourself.

[00:25:03] Bryan Carroll: Hmm. So what is tenant? So. 

[00:25:06] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Tenants seven. So like any factory, you got to take out the trash, right? So this is basically the garbage pile of, of your body. The easiest thing to talk about first is life effusion, accumulation. Anytime you have cells undergoing on top of. Especially mitochondria you're you're the salt sort of takes all the pieces apart apart recycles them and uses them to build a new mitochondria or whatever organelle it is.

[00:25:30] But there's always some little glob that your cell just doesn't know what to do with it's usually some metals and proteins indigestible mature. And I kind of, I'd like to call this the kitchen drawer phenomenon. The cell takes this gunk that it can't digest and it shoves it in the back. Right. And for a short-lived cell, it doesn't really matter.

[00:25:49] Cause when the cell dies, it dies too. But for long lived cells, like your brain cells. They just fill up with gunk. And if you look at the brain of like 90, a hundred year olds, they're filled with life effusion, and clearly you're not going to be functioning well, if your cells are filled with gunk. So what we want to do is try to limit the amount of lipid fusion accumulation, if you can.

[00:26:07] And there, there, there, there are ways to do that. But the most important thing in this category is actually glycation, which is glucose. Everything. And it's not, I use glucose sort of as, as the big term, meaning all sugars. So it's fructose sucrose, all those sorts of things, but it's, it's molecularly sticky.

[00:26:23] It's sticky on the outside. It's sticky on the inside. It destroys innumerable structures. Six to basically everything had cancer ruins enzymes it women's proteins. Of course we measure it with hemoglobin A1C because it's sticking to the red cells, but in reality it sticks to everything. And when it sticks specifically to different things, it's called different things.

[00:26:41] So most importantly, it's called an age, which is an advanced glycation end product. When it sticks to proteins, these things are devilishly inflammatory. And they stick to your collagen and destroys your collagen over time. And it just sort of destroys you from the inside out. So limiting glycation is extraordinarily.

[00:27:00] Bryan Carroll: Now for people with larger bodies, do they have more storage sites for a lot of those junk to remain in their body? And is it more difficult for them to get it out of their 

[00:27:10] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: body? No. The bigger you are, there's more cells you have. Alright, so it's, it's a cellular problem. So it doesn't really matter if you have a hundred cells or four cells it's cells has to function, and if it doesn't function, it doesn't really matter.

[00:27:23] So the problem with having a big body versus a small body has to do. Actually plumbing, right? The bigger you are, the higher your blood pressure has to be, which means the harder your heart has to pump. So you're going to have hypertrophy. So over the course of a hundred years, it's going to be tough to maintain appropriate supply of nutrients and oxygen and all that kind of stuff to the outer, most parts of your body.

[00:27:47] So for example, extremely fat. Which I know is now a social issue. We're not allowed to say that people are fat. But there's a huge health hazard that the body just can't sustain it, which is why they, you know, get diabetes and high blood pressure and heart failure and stroke and all that sort of thing, because it's just physiologically challenging to support a large body bodies.

[00:28:06] Bryan Carroll: Isn't that fascinating in the medical industry. Now you can't tell a patient that their size is going to cause health 

[00:28:13] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: problems. I find it baffling. I don't know how it's changed a medical issue into a social issue. I really. Don't get it right. That's like saying, oh my God, you're bald. Right? Yeah. It's just a fact.

[00:28:26] Right. It's just, it is it's I don't, I just don't understand where we can't actually, that's not a good analogy because people that are bald, you can't help that you're bald, but people can generally help with, they put in their miles to a certain degree. I mean, there, there is some genetic obesity at the same time, it's just such a health concern.

[00:28:42] And it really bothers me because in COVID star they would show pictures of like 400 pound people. And they'd say these people are completely healthy and they're dying of COVID. The answer is, well, I'm not completely healthy because you know, they're huge. And the more fat you have, the more inflamed you are.

[00:28:57] So it makes sense that your whole body is going to go into a state of inflammation when irritated by a virus. So I just, you know, I wish it would not be socially inappropriate and medically appropriate to say, you know what? It would just be better for you if you were smaller. 

[00:29:12] Bryan Carroll: And just because something was not diagnosed as, I mean, you're in, that makes you healthy.

[00:29:16] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Well, it just undiagnosed means you haven't gone to a doctor recently. Yeah, 

[00:29:20] Bryan Carroll: exactly. Yup. Yeah. Just like you said, it's weird that the social issues are taking over healthcare and medical care. And then, I mean, the downstream effect of that in 10 years is going to be very interesting. 

[00:29:33] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: What, what I think really interesting now is that people are either Uber healthy, right?

[00:29:38] They're on these strict, crazy diets and they exercise like crazy. Or they don't do squat and they're 400 pounds. Like, it seems like we've lost the middle ground, which is really weird because generally speaking life is a bell shaped curve and here it is totally not. Yeah. This could just be my perception because I, you know, I see it.

[00:29:56] I work at a hospital. I see all sorts of crazy stuff. 

[00:30:00] Bryan Carroll: So you have all the tenants. And then in your book, you'd dive a lot deeper into all of them. And what you can do for them is that. That 

[00:30:07] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: is absolutely correct. And I will warn people that if they try to read book one, Half the first half is the most depressing thing you'll ever read.

[00:30:15] And I try to make it cheer you with really bad jokes. But it is, it's like, oh my God, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Oh my God. You know, down, down, down, down, down. So the second half of the book tries to be like, kind of the solution half, like, alright, here are the top 15 agents. What can they do in the tenants?

[00:30:30] How well do they do them? And how are you going to create your, your protocol? So if you can get through the first part of being depressed, the second half has the. 

[00:30:39] Bryan Carroll: I think the amount of people that have been dealing with anxiety and depression up to this point over the last couple of years, I'm sure a book isn't going to be the thing that ends at all for them.

[00:30:49] So I think we're prepared. This is a great time for it. Now when it comes to longevity and trying to figure out exactly what it is that your body needs, is there any specific testing that is really good? That pretty much everyone should be testing? Or is it very dependent upon who you are? 

[00:31:08] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: That's an excellent question and it sort of depends on exactly who you are.

[00:31:12] So number one, it's age dependent. If you are 35 and completely healthy, you're probably absolutely. Right. If you're 35 and you have a history or family history of a horrible medical problems, everyone's died in their forties of coronary disease. You know, you're, you're something different altogether. You know, if you're in your twenties and everyone, you know, has had some horrible cancer, you should get checked, but for a normal person as they get older, normal labs to start with are going to be fine.

[00:31:39] You want to make sure your liver is okay. You want to make sure your kidney is okay. You want to make sure all the baseline regular stuff is intact right now beyond that is when the longevity obsession begins. And once you've crossed that threshold, like you can test pretty much anything you want to test.

[00:31:56] It's a matter of whether or not you're going to see any results in terms of treating it right. You can get your epigenetics tested. You can get your telomeres measured. You can get your glycation scores. You can measure. What kind of bugs are in your gut to determine if you've got good bugs or bad dogs, you can have all of your genetics checked for like likelihood of different diseases.

[00:32:15] You can have every sub whatever of every, everything dissected and measured. And then you stare at a plethora of numbers and wonder what to do. And that's always kind of the funny part. And that's why people always call me. They're like, all right, I've got tons of data now, what do I do? And then I help 

[00:32:31] Bryan Carroll: them.

[00:32:31] And that's where that Kauffman protocol comes in. That's exactly right. Yep. Well, Sandra, is there any final things you want to make sure that we cover when it comes to longevity and just people taking care of themselves so that they can age gracefully? 

[00:32:48] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Well, the idea is sort of is, as I said, like the first part of all of this is extraordinarily depressing and I don't want people to think, oh my God, this is horrible.

[00:32:55] There are molecular agents. Most of them are over-the-counter that fixed or. Partly fix most of these things. And what I discovered is that any one thing, one agent can do several things. So I created a rating system so that you know exactly what you are doing. So the first book has 15 agents. The S the book that I'm about to release right now is another 29 agents in it.

[00:33:18] And they all come with a seven digit rating number. So if you line them up, you know exactly how well you are addressing each of the seven. So, if you look at a number now, each in each line, it's going to be from zero to three. So zero means it does obviously nothing. And three is the maximum three means there evidence in humans that it's amazingly effective and one or two are sort of in between.

[00:33:39] Right? So if you really, really want to treat all of the tenants of aging, you make sure that you have agents that treat each one of the Canada. And then if you are predisposed to having a disease in any of these categories, you want to sort of load up more points in that category. So example, if your family is all diabetic or you're pre-diabetic or your junk food junkie, like I am take a ton of stuff to lower your blood sugar in tenancy.

[00:34:01] Right. If you have some sort of arthritic problems or autoimmune problems and that sort of thing, anything with your immune systems is out of whack. You, you load up more points in category five, so you can sort of take the information that I have given people and arrange it to sort of create a personalized protocol to initiate their longevity.

[00:34:22] Bryan Carroll: Perfect. And my final question for you is what is your vision of what healthy looks like and what are three things you do daily to reach that. 

[00:34:31] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Okay. Number one, I swallow a ton of pills. I take 50 things a day, which is probably a little bit absurd, but I am the world's biggest Guinea pig. And I live by the credo, you know, measure ProCon ratio.

[00:34:43] And if there aren't any cons, go ahead and do it. So that's number one. Number two, I exercise daily because I think that's a huge component of it. And the key to exercise is finding something that you absolutely just love to do. So I'm a huge swimmer and I'm a huge rock climb. You know, everyone's got their thing, whatever it is, just get out and do it.

[00:35:02] And three is, I think the people make the mistake of, oh my God, I'm 50, I'm 60, I'm 70. I'm going to die soon. So why keep trying? And the answer is you're not, we're going to live to 90, a hundred, I'm going to 120. So plan accordingly, like don't know don't ever go. Yeah, I'm done. Cause you're not plan accordingly money, time, exercise, family, whatever the hell you want to do, just keep doing it.

[00:35:23] And those would be my three golden things that I do. 

[00:35:26] Bryan Carroll: We need to take that many pills. Do you ever get upset stomach or anything like 

[00:35:30] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: that? Nope, not a thing. I mean, they're divided up, right? I mean, it's some in the morning, some in the afternoon, some at night I try to spread out my free radical scavengers.

[00:35:40] I try to take things that are oil soluble or fat-soluble with food, things that are water-soluble. It doesn't really matter. I try to work on it, you know, I designed it by half-life blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which is far more than anyone really needs to know. But the answer is no, it doesn't bother me.

[00:35:55] Bryan Carroll: Okay. Yeah. I know some people they can take, you know, just a couple of pills and it really irritates them. So I'm always curious where people that pop a bunch, if they start to interact in different ways and cause your gut to be a little angry. 

[00:36:09] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: No, not at all. And it's interesting in a lot of studies, a lot studies used to be like one agent, one is to do and more recent studies have been combining things like permanent and Rivera trial or asked is Anthon and Delfin it in.

[00:36:21] And they all tend to be at this point, synergistic, which means that you don't have to take a full dose of anything. You can take a significantly reduced dose of many things to sort of get the same effect. So that's sort of what I do because everyone always asks me for a dose of something and all the doses are dependent upon, or at least designed by taking one thing at a time.

[00:36:41] So I take a significantly reduced dose. I just take a ton of it. 

[00:36:46] Bryan Carroll: Makes sense. Well, people can find more about [email protected] and then what's the name of your book? 

[00:36:53] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: So it's really clever. It's called, called the Kauffman protocol. Nice. Simple. Yeah, actually, and this one's called why we age and how to stop it.

[00:37:01] And book two, which is sitting at the editor's desk. So hopefully one month or two that'll be out it's called aging solutions. So. That fingers crossed. That'll be out soon. It's been forever. Yeah. 

[00:37:15] Bryan Carroll: Yep. And I'm sure those books are all found where books are sold, Amazon Barnes and noble, all that type of stuff.

[00:37:22] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: Actually it's only on Amazon, only on Amazon. And the reason it's only on Amazon is what's. In the old days, you had to go to a publisher editor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they take like 90% of your money versus you put it on Amazon and you. More control over what you put in the book. Because the publishers and agents who wanted to change everything, I'm like, oh no, no, no, no.

[00:37:43] This is my book. So Amazon doesn't care and they give you more cash back. So the answer is it's on Amazon by guarantee. They'll send it to you the next day. Cause I don't know, 58,000 of them have sold already. No one's complained. Perfect. 

[00:37:57] Bryan Carroll: All right, Sandra, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I hope people go and read your book slash books.

[00:38:03] When the other one comes out as well, and then people can start improving their own longevity and sorry, aging to maybe one 20, just like you. 

[00:38:11] Dr. Sandra Kaufmann: I hope so. Cause I don't, I don't want to be the only old person hanging out. You know, that age I need some. 

[00:38:16] Bryan Carroll: All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. I hope you learned a lot from Dr.

[00:38:20] Sandra. I know I did, and it makes me really want to read her books. I gotta put that on my reading list of things to read this year is her book all about longevity. So, and if you want links to any of the resources that we talked about, then head on over to summit for wellness.com/ 1 7 3, and all of those resources will be there, including the link to her.

[00:38:42] One of the things I thought was really interesting is how she was bringing up that once you reach certain ages, that's when you want to start doing some of these protocols. So that's good to know because otherwise I probably would have started jumping right into stuff, but I haven't reached those ages that she was talking about.

[00:38:58] So I guess I'll sit back and wait. Unless there's more clarity between now and then when I get to those ages. Next week. I have Dr. Glenn Livingston on the show. Let's go learn who he is and what we'll be talking about. I am here with Dr. Glenn Livingston. Hey Glenn, what is one unique thing about you that most people don't.

[00:39:16] Dr. Glenn Livingston: I can juggle five balls, 

[00:39:17] Bryan Carroll: five balls. Are they flaming regular? 

[00:39:22] Dr. Glenn Livingston: A funny story is when I was a kid, I went to the juggle knife, so I taped up a big butcher knife and I juggle it in my. With the masking tape on it until they confirm it a hundred times with that missing. And I, I didn't tell my mom about this at all.

[00:39:36] And then one day I just take up all of it off all the masking tape and I come downstairs and you're struggling with a big butcher's knife and she wouldn't let me juggle knives after that whatsoever. So now they weren't flaming walls. It was beanbags is. Like the struggle with it's, it's been a long time since I've been doing that, but it's a kind of meditation and something that really humbles me repeatedly that because you know, you can do it and then you can't do it and then you can do it and you can't do it.

[00:40:00] And you have to, you can't be thinking about other things while you're doing that. You have to be really focused. So it's a nice kind of meditation that brings me back to the present moment. 

[00:40:09] Bryan Carroll: I can do three just fine, but once you start adding in more guys, complicates. 

[00:40:16] Dr. Glenn Livingston: Th there's a book called juggling for the complete klutz that will show you how to take three to five.

[00:40:20] But they told me that on a scale of one to 10 juggling three balls is about a seven juggling. Four balls is about an 11 and juggling five balls is about a 37. Cause you have to create that extra space. And it took me a long time. I spent a lot of time picking balls up from the floor. I don't know if I would do it as an old man now, but 

[00:40:39] Bryan Carroll: yup.

[00:40:40] Well what will we be learning about in our interview today? 

[00:40:44] Dr. Glenn Livingston: You're going to learn how to think, like a permanently healthy person. You're gonna learn how to get rid of your food obsession overeating tendencies the H how to manage the desire to break your own best thinking. We all have our best thinking, and then we have what we actually do.

[00:41:07] Are faced with a temptation and you gonna learn some methods for for inserting a space between stimulus and response so that you can redirect yourself and stop over writing your own best judgment and do what you really believe is best. 

[00:41:23] Bryan Carroll: What are your favorite foods or nutrients that you think everyone should get more of in their diet?

[00:41:29] Dr. Glenn Livingston: You know, I try, I actually try not to preach. Diet in particular. Cause it, it took me you know, it took me 15 years to evolve to where I am, but I really think we're designed to have a lot more fruits and vegetables. I really think that the bulk of our diet is supposed to be fruits and vegetables. And we, we think of them as an afterthought.

[00:41:47] Dr. Fermin says the salad is the main meal and I think that's probably the message. Everybody should have, is that the salad is the main meal and not all this other stuff. This salad is not an afterthought or something. You have undecided. The salad is the main meal and the other thing should be afterthoughts.

[00:42:03] That's. That's what I think. 

[00:42:06] Bryan Carroll: What are your top three health tips for anyone who wants to improve their overall. 

[00:42:11] Dr. Glenn Livingston: Drinking nothing but purified water. Get a little bit of sign every day and take some time to write down and reflect on your thoughts rather than just acting upon them every morning so that you can get yourself into a space to be more proactive and centered and kind and constructive with yourself.

[00:42:33] Bryan Carroll: Oh, the reasoning behind why people struggle with binge eating and all the the mental challenges with that is very fascinating. So you will definitely enjoy that episode with Dr. Glenn and until then keep climbing to the peak of your health.